**Acknowledgements**

*Earth Crust*

9.Angle variation gain

10.Gain equalization

Export processed data for mapping.

11.Data export

12.Mapping

**6. Typical detection results**

Angle variation gain is used to compensate for backscattering variations due to

Gain equalization can be used to address the unevenness of side-scan data due to hardware gain changes or excessive pitch angles during data acquisition.

Use Surfer software to perform topographical and geomorphological mapping.

Ten years sea-trial and application have shown that the Jiaolong BSSS can produce high-resolution micro-topographical and micro-geomorphological maps; isobaths can be displayed at 2-m intervals, and many seafloor details are clearly distinguished (**Figure 13**). Furthermore, comparison of micro-topographical and

Numerous fields require access to seafloor topography and geomorphology. The onboard deep-sea multi-beam sounding system should be used to map the area and obtain a relatively accurate topographic map of the seabed to provide basic terrain data. Although a shipborne deep-sea multibeam sounding system can detect a wide range of deep seabed terrains, its detection accuracy is limited, and it cannot search

*Seafloor (a) micro-topographical and (b) micro-geomorphological maps obtained by the Jiaolong BSSS on a* 

*dive around the peak of a cold spring area [10] (permissions obtained to reprint).*

Near-seafloor micro-topographical mapping is a significant supplement to full sea depth topographical detection. It combines micro-topographical mapping

micro-geomorphological maps can yield additional information.

system beam pattern irregularities and incident angle changes.

**44**

**7. Conclusions**

**Figure 13.**

for small objects on the seafloor.

This work was supported in part by the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology under Grant QNLM2016ORP0406, Taishan Scholar Project Funding under Grant TSPD20161007, National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 41641049, National Key R&D Program of China under Grant 2017YFC0305700, Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation under Grant ZR2015EM005, Shandong Provincial Key R&D Program under Grant 2016GSF115006, and Qingdao Independent Innovation Project under Grant 15-9-1-90-JCH.
